a linguistic representation of an autism

Category Archives: Politics

Martian melting-pots—

And pre-cursing concerns: Point B…

It’d be an understatement to describe my feelings regarding discrimination, injustice and inequality as something I dislike. But as things, they denote unambiguous concepts which I like. One of the greatest challenges someone like me faces in the world growing up, is deciding what things are and how we can define them in stasis, as a unit of information we can be certain of and depend on: something inflexible if you like—but because no unit of information is ever completely still when it’s used situationally, more and more definitions are required that are context dependant; and you can be rest assured that those contexts are never dependant on just the one unit of information.

It’s one of the reasons why autistics are described as natural outside-the-box thinkers. There is truth in this, but only in as far as we’re never actually in the box. The box is jam-packed with the wheres, whys and whatfors of any of a hundred variations of contextual, situational determinant based on previous outcomes and strategies: whether they worked or not, but also an unimaginable series of permutations of static definitions that are in constant flux.

When we get it wrong it can be hilariously inappropriate and embarrassing for all concerned, but not always entirely pleasant. But this is the reason some environments are so exhausting— while the processes I describe take little discernible time, they are constantly active: we receive the information, intellectualise the information, throw it away, add it to the box, or discard something that’s no longer required— it’s a form over-clocking which is difficult to maintain for very long without practice and even then, it’s not something I’d describe as best practise. Far from it.

The reason I mention it, is to offer a context; describe the box as it were, because how stuff sometimes comes out is a mystery— links, overlaps, patterns, systems and definitions frequently collide and contexts are sometimes erroneously cast-off. But sometimes it’s nice to just, not throw these things away because they serve no purpose— because whether we like it or not, we are in some way defining ourselves as much as we’re trying to make sense of the world by defining what’s in it. Sometimes however, some things just will not be put in a box. No matter how much we’d prefer it.

*

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and … as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.”

*

Those of you who are familiar with that piece of text will know it be the work of H. G. Wells. It’s twenty words longer and less snappy than Jeff Wayne’s adaptation, but far fitter for the purpose of elaborating the work of John Gray Ph.D. I’m sure at the time of writing it, he considered women to be from Venus to be quite original, but I think the switch in celestial body was more a ploy to conceal his inspiration, just as Wells may have, regarding his epiphany about the Martians’ hostile take-over of the planet.

I certainly can’t see the problem with finding it analogous to certain gender-identity stereotypes, at least not with all these planets and primates whizzing around, and almost impossible not to with the application of the odd suppostion-paradigm to the text. I find it quite amusing how much Woman and aliens have in common in this respect— mass destruction and want to annihilate the species excepted.

But for starters, the period is a little off, so we’ll bring it forward a hundred years, at least in line with the post-internet shopping revolution, but for purely cosmetic reasons you understand: lipsticks and what have you. If I’m going to go-there, I want to get the scenery correct.

From there it’s easier to allude to the concept of being watched keenly and closely, for this is one ofthemore astute gifts Woman possesses: they will observe shoes, handbags and precious stones in great detail and all manner of things they rather like, whilst at the same time and without remorse find error in them; then tell each other about it. This is because Woman possess intelligences greater than man’s and were it not for other women, they might have nothing whatsoever to talk about.

That said however, I draw the line at making inferences suggesting Woman’s ability to reason is better than man’s, because I cannot and nor can anyone on Earth— which is quite fitting as I have imagery of Womanhaving man scrutinised and studied [like] creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water and finding error with them, just whizzing around. I think I’ll let the ‘drip’ similes speak for themselves, of which there are many, as it seems especially pertinent when comparing man to the contents of a Petri-dish— and by water, I do not mean Coco Channel.

Woman is not afflicted with infinite complacency either and though man may be serene in [his] assurance of their empire over matter, they are not when it comes to Woman:Woman is less straightforward than that. Matter has rules which govern it: Woman does not.

And so on and so forth…

Personally, I have always found this streamlining of humanity problematic; as much as I need definition to function properly, I resent pigeon-holing, and no doubt the invaders did too. I don’t even associate masculinity and femininity as too separate an entity, or even two too separate entities, considering instead gender-identity to be more in-keeping with sexuality; more along the lines of a spectrum— quite where I’d place Martians on the scale is by the by, but for all their questionable habits, I wouldn’t discount the possibility of the odd conscientious objector.

Whether it is intended or otherwise, discrimination will always occur with such binary systems, hence the medieval logic earlier: conflict cannot be avoided. It’s why I don’t think I’ve never met a feminist, despite meeting a lot of people who claim to be.

I find it’s as much a language issue than anything, because I’ve never heard the same definition twice and I’ve heard thousands— as such the term is completely without meaning to me; and I’ve always felt that tacking it on to what are sometimes supportable, passionate and well reasoned individual beliefs to be utterly devaluing to the person having them because of it.

Just because[some] feminists: “embody an ideology based on what is best about our species both emotionally and spiritually for the betterment and improvement of the world,” doesn’t make them separate beings.

That’s not equality— which is one of the things they seem to agree with: equality that is, but you’d be surprised by the number that don’t. With equality however, it’s far easier to ask: what is Woman, if not the heart of the world?

It’s bows and arrows against the lightning—

They ‘aven’t seen that fire-beam yet…

Herbert George Wells, War of the Worlds

In the Telegraph today, Douglas Carswell writes:

“For years, the debate about immigration has been dominated by “experts”.

“Complex and inaccessible data was used by remote academics. They crunched the numbers and were left to draw the conclusions. The rest of us had to take it on trust that the facts sustained what they told us.”

The Guardian’s Mary Dejevsky agrees somewhat and tells us [the] immigration debate is not just about numbers … We have to consider people’s daily experience too:

“[The] Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at University College London, found arrivals from the European economic area (EEA) since 1995 to have been even more of an asset to the UK economy than previously thought. They had, it calculated, contributed £8.8bn over the 15 years between 1995 and 2011, and if you considered only the past 10 years, the balance was even more positive.”

However Steve Doughty from The Daily Mail, read the same report and interpreted it slightly differently, claiming that :

“Immigrants from outside Europe have taken £100billion more in benefits and services than they paid back in taxes, a major study revealed yesterday.

“Over a 16-year period, the bill to the taxpayer of providing them with welfare, health and education was 14 per cent higher than the money they put in the national purse.”

This is a problem— when our source material is provided by unimpeachable sources but the conclusions drawn from it are wildly disparate, I’m afraid either the nature of the data or the conclusions must be rendered as lacking validity. At least in a usable, practicable way. Studies ought to inform, not divide in such a binary manner.

This is not a new problem. In an article in Scientific American, Patternicity: Finding Meaningful Patterns in Meaningless Noise, Michael Shermer writes about the mechanisms that allow us to see such differences; it also alows us to see bunny rabbits in fluffy clouds— the same mechanism which results in ‘complex and inaccessible data’ being summarised and presented as fact, while ignoring that:

“Unfortunately, we did not evolve a Baloney Detection Network in the brain to distinguish between true and false patterns.”

It is describing a form of apophenia: the ability we have to see what we want to see; or more simply, the ability to make sense when there is none. In fact, the irony is, I too could be doing just that, but I’ll be describing how I perceive the opinion process in another post, I just wanted to get the Baloney Detection Network out there because I love it, just as much as Hemmingway’s bullshit detector. It’s more or less the same thing.

Anyway, no amount of numbers can alter the fact that immigration is simply someone moving from one place to another. So I ask you, simply…

Why not just employ nightclub doormen as immigration officials?

Have you ever tried getting into a club if your name wasn’t on the list?